Union Pushes Effort To Boost Membership

Organizing May Have Derailed Quick Deal

September 16, 1999|By Stephen Franklin, Tribune Staff Writer.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — The smart guys said this wouldn't happen.

They said the United Auto Workers union, giddy over the rare prospect of sharing the auto industry's newfound wealth, would sit down with DaimlerChrysler AG, the two would see eye-to-eye and zip, the UAW would dance away with a sweet new contract in hand.

So much for handicapping the dealings between the UAW and the U.S. auto industry, even when the industry is knee-deep in profits.

After its national contract expired at midnight Tuesday, the union's negotiators met through the early morning with DaimlerChrysler officials and apparently remained locked Wednesday in slow-going talks.

Earlier, when the UAW decided to make its pattern-setting deal with DaimlerChrysler, marking the first time in 23 years that it picked the nation's No. 3 automaker as its initial bargaining partner, it was widely expected the two sides would quickly reach a deal.

The UAW is bargaining for a new contract for more than 380,000 members at DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. Workers now make about $21 an hour.

With the union and company largely abiding by a blackout on news about their negotiations, industry experts suggested that the cause of the stall was the UAW's recent determination to extend its ranks to non-union assembly plants and the mostly non-union parts industry.

Namely, the union reportedly wants to line up DaimlerChrysler's support for its organizing effort at the company's facilities in Alabama and North Carolina as well as get the German-based company to use its clout to persuade non-union partsmakers that serve the automaker to also accept the UAW's organizing efforts.

Such an effort would represent a step-up in the union's wish list.

"In the last couple of weeks (UAW President Stephen) Yokich threw in the Freightliner plants (in North Carolina) and handed the company a list of suppliers plants too," said Sean McAlinden, an auto industry expert at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "The Germans are not too happy."

For the last few months, the union had reportedly focused its efforts on persuading the Stuttgart-based company to ease the union's efforts in organizing workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

The union has told the company it wants to organize the workers by a card-check and not a secret election, which is often riskier for a union. To succeed in a card check, the union needs only half of the workers to indicate their desire to join.

Going into the latest round of contract talks, the union showed great restraint toward the auto companies. It avoided typical threats of shutting down the automakers, who appear headed for a record-breaking year of sales and would like to avoid any production cutbacks.

But the UAW briefly showed its grit late Tuesday when it encouraged wildcat strikes on the night shift at three plants in Kokomo, Ind., and two in suburban St. Louis. By the start of Wednesday's workday, however, the strikes were over.

If the UAW was on the best of terms with DaimlerChrysler going into the talks and it looked the other way on wildcat strikes to shake up the company, then its treatment of Ford is likely to prove rougher.

Ford has quickly become the union's No. 1 nemesis because of its apparent intention to spin off its Visteon partsmaking unit, with 23,500 UAW-represented workers.